Hear how the University of South Carolina’s athletic training program moved from ATu adoption to meaningful, program-wide integration. Zachary Winkelmann, PhD, LAT, ATC, CHSE, shares practical insights on curriculum mapping, faculty collaboration, simulations, and lessons learned from integrating ATu across the entire program.

Featured Speaker: Christopher Schmidt, PhD, ATC

An athletic training professional for 30 years, Dr. Schmidt’s career spans clinical care, academic leadership, and professional service. From treating patients across diverse settings to shaping undergraduate and graduate programs, he’s a contributor in the field, influencing best practices through research and committee roles with the NATA and CAATE. His passion extends to curriculum design, interprofessional education, and youth sports injury prevention, helping to shape the future of athletic training.

00:00 ATU Faculty Webinar Implementation

05:31 USC Athletic Training Program Overview

08:25 Transition to ATU Textbooks

13:33 ATU Apps Curriculum Integration

19:04 ATU Resource Integration Discussion

22:39 Simulation-Based Learning Implementation Discussion

26:36 ATU Simulation and Dashboard Features

33:12 ATU Bookmark Feature Implementation

Helpful Links: Complimentary Educator access | Educator resources | Set up a Demo

How to Integrate ATu Across Your Athletic Training Curriculum: Lessons from USC

What does it take to move an entire athletic training program away from textbooks? When the University of South Carolina (USC) faculty sat down to map out their program’s educational resources in 2023, they faced a familiar problem. Textbooks were expensive, they did not always line up with course content, and students carried both the cost and the physical weight from one semester to the next.

Zachary K. Winkelmann, PhD, LAT, ATC, CHSE, Clinical Associate Professor and Program Director of the Post-Professional Athletic Training Program at USC, joined our webinar to share how his faculty moved from adopting ATu to using it across their program. He walked us through what made it work, whether you are just starting to explore ATu or looking to use it more fully in your own courses.

From Textbooks to ATu: Why USC Made the Switch

When USC’s masters-level athletic training program launched in 2019, students faced approximately $850 in textbook costs across the two-year curriculum. The faculty tried partnering with a publisher for a bundle discount, but not every course had a suitable textbook option within it, so gaps remained. Dr. Winkelmann and his colleagues kept looking for alternatives, and ATu entered the picture in fall 2022 as a supplemental resource in a single course, where faculty projected content on screen during class and explored what ATu could do.

That trial period gave the team a semester to understand ATu’s features, judge its teaching value, and plan before committing. By summer 2023 they were ready, and USC eliminated all traditional textbooks for incoming students and made ATu their primary educational resource. The decision has held ever since, and students now purchase only one or two specialized textbooks for topics that ATu does not yet cover.

Students who had used both textbooks and ATu compared the two directly, and their feedback centered on accessibility and learning design. Dense pharmacology chapters felt more manageable when broken into ATu’s shorter, focused learning modules, and visual learners appreciated being able to watch a skill performed, pause, rewind, and review at their own pace. The cost savings remain significant as well, because the two-year ATu bundle gives students continuous access throughout the program and into their early BOC preparation. Students on clinical immersions also have their entire curriculum on their phones and tablets instead of hauling backpacks full of books.

Curriculum Mapping: Start with What ATu Offers

USC’s integration started with how Dr. Winkelmann and his colleagues framed the work. Instead of asking how ATu fits into what they already teach, they asked what ATu offers and how that could fit into their courses. To answer that question, the faculty gathered around a conference table with a spreadsheet that listed every USC course number down one side and every ATu app across the other, including orthopedics, neurology, PNF, pediatrics, pharmacology, and more. They then worked through the apps one at a time to see where the content matched a course, and the exercise surfaced three useful patterns:

• Some apps spanned several courses. Manual therapy, for example, fit orthopedics, therapeutic interventions, and advanced clinical skills, so the team decided which course and instructor would use which content and when to avoid purposeless repetition.
• Some apps were not being used at all. NeuroRehab was one, and that prompted a discussion about whether to add the content or leave it as outside the program’s scope.
• Some content was not available yet. When Dr. Winkelmann needed mental health content for his behavioral health course in 2023, that app had not launched in ATu, so the faculty used free digital resources until the app and companion simulations were available and then made the switch.

The mapping worked as faculty development as well as planning. It opened up conversations about curriculum design, content scaffolding, and how students build knowledge across the two-year program. Sitting together to decide which content goes where, and who teaches what, created shared ownership of the whole curriculum.

Simulations and the Educator Dashboard: Authentic Practice at Scale

The mapping also showed Dr. Winkelmann where ATu’s simulations could fit, which mattered to him because his research centers on simulation-based learning. ATu includes over 200 simulations at three levels, and USC uses them to offer application-based learning without the resources that standardized patients or high-fidelity mannequins require. Dr. Winkelmann explained that “I love simulation-based learning, but the time and planning and resources for standardized patients is time-consuming.” The three levels each provide different benefits for the learner and educator:

• “Learning boosts” check basic recall.
• “MiniSIMs” place students in patient-centered scenarios.
• “MacroSIMs” are advanced clinical experiences that run 20 to 30 minutes.

Students in his courses complete four to ten simulations per semester. In his behavioral health course they work through all four available MacroSIMs, and in advanced clinical skills they complete ten simulations covering topics from diagnostic imaging to emergency care. The simulations are also scaffolded across the curriculum, so students might learn about sickle cell disease early on and then meet a sickle cell crisis simulation in a later clinical course, when they are better prepared to synthesize and apply that knowledge.

The “Educator Dashboard” is what makes these assignments manageable. Dr. Winkelmann can see in real time how long students spend on each simulation, how many attempts they make, and how their performance changes, and he can enter grades in Blackboard right away instead of waiting for screenshots or PDFs. He typically allows two attempts with the highest score counting toward the grade, which gives students room to learn without encouraging them to rush through repeatedly just to see every question. The dashboard also helps him spot students who may need support, since someone who spends 24 minutes earning a perfect score may need something different from someone who finishes in under a minute with a failing grade.

Bookmarks and Orientation: Helping Students Find Their Way

Even with ATu’s intuitive design, USC students sometimes felt overwhelmed by the full suite of apps and content, wondering where the blood pressure video was or which app held the standard precautions simulation. Faculty first answered this by embedding direct hyperlinks to specific ATu content in their syllabi and learning management system, so students landed exactly where they needed to be. Dr. Winkelmann then discovered ATu’s “bookmark” feature at a conference, and it took that approach a step further.

He now creates a bookmark collection for each course, essentially a mini-textbook organized by his own topics and modules. In his summer introduction course, for example, he groups bookmarks under subheaders such as “Vital Signs and PPE” and “Wound Care,” with the relevant videos and content nested beneath each one. Students download the collection into their own ATu accounts, which gives them a personalized roadmap through the semester. Student feedback also taught him that structured subheaders work far better than one undifferentiated list.

Navigation was only half of the solution, because USC’s approach to onboarding changed every year. In the first year, students were told what ATu was and that they needed to buy it, and they struggled with navigation and had frequent technical questions. In the second year, faculty offered one-on-one coaching to students who seemed lost, and in the third, Dr. Winkelmann created a “how-to quiz” with screenshots showing where to find different types of content and features. The breakthrough came most recently with a live orientation at the start of the summer term, which taught students in 30 minutes how to navigate ATu, access their assignments, and use key features, and Dr. Winkelmann reported that “We’ve had zero questions… People learned in that 30-minute time span exactly what to do and how to do it.”

Bringing It All Together: Where to Start

The detail that has stayed with us most from the webinar is how much of USC’s progress came from small adjustments made year after year, from a trial in one course to a spreadsheet, a bookmark collection, and a 30-minute orientation. None of it happened overnight, and it took collaboration and a willingness to adjust. That is also why Dr. Winkelmann’s advice for programs exploring ATu comes down to three starting points:

• Start with exploration. Spend time learning every app, simulation, and feature in ATu before deciding where it fits, because, as Dr. Winkelmann emphasized, “You don’t know what you don’t know until you learn what’s actually in there.”
• Map collaboratively. Sit together with your faculty colleagues to discuss which content goes where, who teaches what, and how topics build across semesters.
• Invest in orientation. Whether you bring in support from ATu or create your own onboarding materials, those first 30 minutes can save countless hours of confusion and technical questions during the semester.

These are small changes you can begin on your own schedule. As Dr. Winkelmann’s experience shows, you do not have to make all of them at once. A good first step could be as simple as adding a direct hyperlink to one specific ATu video in your syllabus, which is exactly where USC began before bookmarks.

Watch the full recording to hear Dr. Winkelmann discuss ATu’s simulations, dashboard, and bookmark feature, then claim Complimentary Educator access to explore ATu for yourself. If you would like to talk through how ATu could fit your program, you can also set up a demo with our ATu Education Lead.